Stoner McTavish, page 27
part #1 of Stoner McTavish Series
“I don’t suppose I have.” She rubbed the back of her neck.
“What I don’t understand,” Stell said, “is why he moved the trip up to Wednesday.”
“When he thought I was dead, he went back to Jackson and checked into the Motel 6 at the edge of town. He used a false name, but the night clerk recognized the description and the car. In the morning, he picked up the camping gear and came back here, the way they’d planned. Gwen told him I was still alive. He knew he had to turn her against me, so he showed her a letter I’d written to Marylou — he found it in my fireplace before he met me at Elk Island — and said I’d tried to make a play for him, to break them up. That seemed to work, but when I forced her to come outside and talk to me, she was pretty shaken when she got back. I guess he figured he had to act fast, before she started to put the pieces together.
“He convinced her they needed to get off by themselves right away, to take her mind off what had happened. Jake was in Laramie, and his nephew didn’t know enough — or care enough — to be suspicious when he changed their reservations.”
She broke the stick. “Gwen was hurt and confused by what she thought I’d done to her. And a little afraid of him, I think. He’d gotten pretty ugly about that trip once before. She wanted to believe him, and didn’t know what else to do. So she went along.”
Stell took a chunk of stale bread from her pocket and tossed it to a passing jay. “It’s lucky you checked the reservation book. Or was it luck?”
“I was worried about Blacky. And I knew I’d have to follow them, so I wanted to see what time they’d be leaving.” She shrugged. “Guess I’m a little impulsive.”
Stell laughed. “Compulsive or thorough. At least she’s talking about it to you.”
“Only to tell me that much. Only because I pushed.”
Not that there’s been much time. The local police, State police, Forest Service, Park Service all had questions, and all wanted answers, and they positively refused to share questions or answers. They wouldn’t even share pencils, as far as she could tell. Through it all Smokey stood to the side, hands on hips, ready and eager to break heads if necessary, in case things got nasty. Stell had dealt with reporters as if they were Jesus Christ himself talking mean. What few reporters there were. Accidents didn’t hold the public’s attention for long. But there had been phone calls to make, arrangements to ship Bryan’s body to Boston since they couldn’t come up with any living relatives.
The times they were alone, Gwen wrapped herself in a world of her own, closed in with her private thoughts like a mussel at low tide. Whatever she was going through, she was going through alone.
Stell took Stoner’s hand in hers and laced their fingers together. “The police report came through, Stoner. He had a record.”
Stoner looked at her. “What for?”
“Assault. Assault with a deadly weapon. Both women.” She squeezed Stoner’s hand. “You’re not going to like this. Rape.”
She hunched her shoulders. “Christ. Where?”
“Wisconsin, Arkansas, and New Mexico. He must have been desperate, to go to Arkansas.”
“Was he… married to any of them?”
“The first two. He was engaged to the third.”
“Jesus,” Stoner said. “He made a career of it.”
“Well,” said Stell, “he’d have had to retire when he lost his looks. Come to think of it, he’s not too pretty now.”
“Stell!” She tried not to laugh, and failed.
The older woman looked at her. “It’s good to hear you laugh again. I’ll miss you, Little Bear.”
Stoner sighed. “I’ll miss you, too. I’d like to come back some time, if you’ll have me.”
“If I’ll have you? What’s that supposed to mean, if I’ll have you?”
“I wasn’t exactly an easy guest.”
Stell punched her on the side of the leg. “You broke up what was otherwise a very dull season.” She looked around at the forest. “Summer’s about over. I can feel it in the air.”
“In New England there will be cobwebs on the lawns now.”
“New England,” Stell said. “It’s a world away.”
Blinking back tears, Stoner traced Stell’s knuckles with the tip of her finger. “Do you think I’ll ever… see you again?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Stell said roughly. She slipped an arm around Stoner’s shoulders. “You’re part of the family.”
“Stell, may I tell you something awful?”
“Why not? I’m used to bad news from you.”
“I don’t want her to marry again.”
Stell took a deep breath. “I’m going to make a speech, Stoner. Maybe it’ll mean something to you, and maybe it won’t. But I want you to listen.”
Stoner looked at her.
“I want you to have what you want, Little Bear. But life unfolds in its own way, and sometimes you think it’s all going against you. But when times are hard, remember that a day is only one day, a year is only one year, and a lifetime is a very long time to live.
“There’s something we’ve learned through the years, John and Ted and I. The sweet moments are sweeter, and the bitter moments less bitter if you have a loving friend. And no matter what the future holds for you and Gwen, I can’t imagine a more loving friend than you.”
Stoner rested her head on Stell’s shoulder. She smelled of fresh bread. For the rest of my life, whenever I smell that I’ll think of her. “Thank you,” she said.
After a moment Stell dislodged her gently. “Now, I have messages for you. Smokey sends his love.”
“I wish he could have been here.”
Stell smiled, “He’s hiding. Hates goodbyes. Tonight he’ll sit in the kitchen and drink your health until we have to pour him into bed.”
“I wanted to thank him for taking over these past days. I couldn’t have done it without him.”
“Well, you had your hands full with her. Jessie called.”
“She found us, you know. She brought the horses back.”
“She said to tell you, next time you’re caught with five horses on your hands, try tying them together.”
“Oh.”
“And, Stoner, that doesn’t mean tying the tail of one horse to the nose of the horse behind.”
“I didn’t do that,” Stoner said.
“You’re capable of it. The Thibaults will see you back in civilization.” She stood up. “I guess that wraps it up.”
“I guess it does.” She stared at the ground miserably.
Stell ruffled her hair. “Come on. It’s not the end of the world.”
Stoner looked up at the mountains.
“They’ll still be here,” Stell said. “Next year.”
“Yeah.”
“Here she comes.” Gwen was walking down the path, her sneakers sending up little puffs of dust. Stell went to meet her.
Stoner hung back. A few thin clouds flew like pennants from the peak of Grand Teton. The glaciers sparkled in the morning sun. Well, so long.
She turned quickly and strode to the parking lot. “All set?”
Gwen nodded. Stoner took her suitcase and locked it in the car trunk. She wiped her hands on her jeans. “We might as well go.”
Stell cleared her throat. “Take care of yourself, Gwen,” she said, wrapping her arms around her.
“You, too, Stell. I’m sorry about…” She faded out and slid into the passenger seat.
“Next time you come,” Stell said to Stoner, “bring Marylou.”
Stoner laughed. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” She scraped her feet in the gravel. “Well…”
“Well…”
“I wish you’d let me pay for my room and all.”
“I told you,” Stell said. “You’re family.”
Stoner threw her arms around Stell’s neck. “I love you,” she said.
“Be good, Little Bear,” Stell said, holding her. “Now get out of here before I make a fool of myself.”
Stoner ran for the car, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out onto the highway. She didn’t trust herself to look back.
Jackson Hole was two days behind them. Two days of silence, and sunscorched hills. Two nights of silence broken only by the rumble of trucks on the highway outside the motel rooms, and the rustle of Gwen’s bedsheets as she tossed in her sleep. Two days and two nights of silence, and wondering what to do.
The flatlands gave way to wheat. Miles of hot, white sun, over miles of fields of tawny grain that stretched to every horizon. Only wild sunflowers and an occasional windmill relieved the enervating monotony.
One trouble with Nebraska was, you didn’t know if it was worse with the windows open or shut. The air in the car was stifling, but when she opened the windows wide, the hot wind scoured her face.
Another was Interstate 80, which was long, fast, straight, and bypassed everything but Stuckey’s. At times you could catch a glimpse of a small, gray town from the highway. Towns built by speed when the railroads headed west, destroyed by speed when the Interstates headed east. If things were different, they could get off the main road, go down into one of those little towns with names like Roscoe and Darr and McCool Junction, look at the grain elevators, watch the trains, have lunch in Mike’s Bar and Grill or Ethel’s Luncheonette, hang around the general store, and feel what life was like in the backwaters of time.
But things weren’t different.
Then there were the bugs, genetically programmed to self-destruct in the exact center of the windshield on the driver’s side. She pressed the washer button, and managed to spread a milky white smear over the entire field of vision.
Given silence, sun, bugs, and Nebraska, at what point does one cease to be legally responsible for one’s behavior?
She glanced over at Gwen. Her face was expressionless, her eyes empty. Her skin had an odd opaqueness despite her tan. The veins on the back of her hands stook out like little blue glass tubes.
What the hell am I doing in this Godforsaken American heartland with this stranger?
Shock, she reminded herself. It’ll pass in time. Be patient.
Did I ever know this woman with the mahogany eyes and fawn-colored hair and a voice like velvet? We giggled together in a bar in Wyoming. We touched in Yellowstone. I held her through a storm. She held me. What happened?
Bryan Oxnard happened.
He’s dead, and he’s still with us.
A thin layer of dust coated the inside of the car. Her lips felt cracked and gritty. The wind twisted and bruised the grain into patterns like ocean waves. Amber waves of grain, my Aunt Matilda. I can live a thousand years without another amber wave. Sell it to the Russians. Give it to the Eskimos. Shoot it into outer space. Bury radioactive waste in it. Who needs it?
They passed another in an endless series of disintegrating gas stations. Dessicated wood, windows empty or cracked, framed in rotting curtains. Coca-cola signs that dangled like suicides from rusting chains. Flecks of paint, molted from the walls, littered the paper-strewn ground. Dead pumps turned slowly and inexorably to rust, melting back into the earth.
“The alchemy of the twenty-first century,” she said, “will be the science of turning rust back into iron ore.”
The wind never stopped blowing.
“This must be a great place to be from. It’s a hell of a place to be in.”
A grasshopper splattered on the windshield.
“Women used to go insane out here in the early days. I can see why.”
Gwen smiled politely.
“We’re almost to Grand Island, whatever that is. Feel like some lunch?”
“If you do.”
Damn it, agree with me. Disagree with me. Take some ridiculous position. Don’t just sit there.
How about a little compassion, McTavish? She gritted her teeth and pressed harded on the accelerator.
Five miles of grain drifted by in silence.
“Say something!” Stoner yelled.
Gwen started. “I’m sorry.”
She ran her hand through her hair. “No, I am.”
“I’m not very good company,” Gwen said. “Why don’t you take a plane home from Omaha? You shouldn’t have to be stuck with me.”
“I’m not ‘stuck with you’.” Sure, Gwen, leave you. You’ll wrap this car around the first tree you see. If there are any trees left in the country. Probably in Ohio. Cleveland. Do you want your last sight in the world to be Cleveland?
A pair of fornicating beetles carried out a desperate lovers’ pact against the glass. “That settles it,” Stoner said. “Now we have to stop.”
Peering under the chalky mess, she spotted a diner ahead. A lone car in the parking lot suggested human life. To one side lounged a dilapidated but apparently functional gas station. “Gosh,” Stoner said, pulling the car off the highway onto a rudimentary dirt road, “my prayers have been answered.”
The gas tank filled, the windshield cleaned, she parked beside the restaurant. “I don’t know. It’s not the Copley Plaza.”
Gwen pointed to a water-stained, fly-specked card scotch taped to a from window. “It passed the Board of Health.”
“Yeah, but when?” She shrugged. “If it’s good enough for Tom Joad, it’s good enough for me.”
Hamburgers and French fries. But not Wort Hotel hamburgers and French fries. This hamburger was thin and greasy. The roll was stale. And the potatoes had soaked in oil for three days. Flies clung in stomach-turning clumps to limp strips of flypaper. The waitress, whose name was probably Shirley — or Charlene — leafed through a movie magazine.
“I know this place,” Stoner said. “It’s the set for ‘The Petrified Forest’.”
Gwen stopped picking at her salad and looked up, meeting Stoner’s eyes. The old butterflies started up in her stomach.
“Where are we?” Gwen asked.
“Relative Obscurity.”
“What?”
“Famous people come from here. ‘He came out of Relative Obscurity.’ Or is that, ‘He came out in Relative Obscurity.’?”
“Where did you come out?”
“The Ritz Carlton. It was the social event of the season.”
“You’re crazy,” Gwen said.
“It’s the altitude.”
“Yeah.” She looked away.
Okay, we do not make overt, audible references to Jackson Hole. Stoner contemplated her hamburger. “I think I may be related to this thing,” she said. “Gwen, are we still friends?”
“I thought we were.”
“Then I wish you’d talk to me.”
Gwen stabbed a wedge of plastic, hard-boiled egg. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said tightly. “You know everything.”
“I don’t know what’s happening inside you.”
“I can’t.”
“Gwen…”
“Don’t, Stoner, please?” She put down her fork, lining it up neatly beside the plate. “I really can’t eat any more,” she said, and got up. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
“Gwen, I…”
“It’s not you. Honestly.” She left the restaurant.
Stoner took a bite of soggy potato. It tasted like tears. She dropped it on her plate.
“You done?” Shirley — or Charlene — asked in a bored voice.
“Yes, I think so.”
Shirley piled the dishes with all the grace of a roller derby queen, and carried them, salad dressing oozing from between the plates, to the counter. “You want more coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
Charlene dumped the dishes, unscraped, into a sink of greasy, sudless, and undoubtedly luke-warm water. “What’s the matter with your friend?”
“My friend.”
“Looks like the walking dead. Them eggs was boiled up fresh this morning. She too good to eat our cooking?”
Stoner drew herself up. “There’s been a tragedy in the family.”
The waitress shrugged. “Oughta eat.”
“One hardly,” said Stoner coldly, “engages in normal behavior at a time like this.”
“Reckon one hardly does,” said Charlene — or was it Shirley — with a smirk.
Stoner paid the bill. “By the way,” she said casually as she took her change, “what do you have to do to be licensed by the Board of Health? Flush the toilets once a week?”
“You must be from the east.”
Stoner leaned toward her confidentially. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Shirley. I just murdered that woman’s husband. Now I’m going to take her out to the nearest irrigation ditch and ravish her.” She tossed two pennies on the table and let the screen door slam behind her.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said to Gwen, “Before she calls the cops.”
“What did you do?”
“You really don’t want to know.” She tossed Gwen the keys. “You drive. I’ll ride shotgun …”
Grinnell, Iowa.
I have to get away from her.
She sat on the edge of the bed and listened to Gwen running water in the bathroom. A truck roared by. Out here, the fifty-five mile speed limit had gone the way of the Wooley Mammoth. Another hundred and fifty miles behind them. Another silent meal.
Maybe I’ll volunteer for the first solo space flight to Jupiter.
Toothbrush in hand, Gwen came out of the bathroom. “It’s all yours,” she said. She turned out her light and huddled in bed.
Stoner gazed at the formless mound of bedclothes that ostensibly contained a living human being. She sighed. “They say there’s a hill outside of Iowa City. That should be exciting.” She closed the bathroom door.
Fists clenched, Stoner lay on her back and watched the rhythmic flashing of the motel sign. Light, dark, light, dark. A beetle attacked the window. She wanted to scream, she wanted to strike out. Gwen’s silence flowed around her. She was suspended in cold, hollow space. Light, dark. She wanted to smash the sign. We’ll both be insane before this is over. Light, dark.
To hell with it. She got up and sat on Gwen’s bed. She touched her shoulder. “Gwen, I can’t keep going this way. I know I said things that hurt you. You said things that hurt me. I don’t care about that now. Yes, I went out there to do a job, but that changed. It changed the minute I met you. Please don’t close me out, Gwen, I… love you.”
